Chapter 57 - The Resurrected Ally
The impact sounded like a metal bomb detonating in the narrow alley. The black ambulance spun across the wet asphalt, its frame twisting as the radiator burst in a blinding cloud of white steam and shattered safety glass.
The sniper inside the cab was crushed against the steering column, instantly incapacitated.
The driver’s door of the battered pickup truck was kicked open from the inside. A woman tumbled out into the rain, coughing, clutching her side. She wore a stained oversized trench coat over hospital scrubs, her face bruised, her golden hair sheared off into jagged, uneven clumps.
It was Chloe.
"Chloe?" I gasped, instinctively clutching Leo closer, stepping back into the defensive shadows of the alley.
My sister looked up at me through swollen, bloodshot eyes. The smug, sadistic sneer that had defined her face at the baby shower was completely gone, replaced by the hollow, haunted stare of a survivor who had looked directly into hell.
"Get in the truck, Elizabeth," Chloe choked out, her voice raspy and broken. She was limping heavily, her right arm bound in a crude medical sling. "Get in the truck before Eleanor’s secondary sweep arrives!"
Victoria, who had been thrown to the pavement by the collision, hauled herself up by the twisted bumper of her ruined ambulance. "Chloe! You wretched, ungrateful little whore! What have you done?"
Chloe turned toward our mother, and for the first time in my life, I saw my sister look at Victoria not with desperate, groveling adoration, but with pure, undiluted hatred.
"You told me I had cancer, Mother," Chloe whispered, her voice shaking with a rage that seemed to tear her apart from within. "You had your doctors pump me full of immunosuppressants for three years so I would remain compliant! You told me Elizabeth was the golden child who was going to steal my inheritance, while you were prepping me to be Eleanor’s next liver donor!"
"You were born to serve the family!" Victoria shrieked, clawing at her ruined coat, her veneer completely dissolved into madness. "You are nothing without the Vance name!"
Chloe reached into the cab of the truck, pulled out an old flare gun, and fired it directly into the ruptured fuel tank of the overturned ambulance.
The blast of yellow fire lit up the entire street, sending Victoria diving into the gutter as a wall of heat and black smoke engulfed the alleyway.
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"Get in!" Chloe screamed at us. "Now!"
Miller grabbed my arm, shoving me into the passenger side of the pickup, before hauling himself into the flatbed behind us with his weapon drawn. Chloe threw the truck into reverse, the tires shrieking against the wet asphalt, before whipping the vehicle around and tearing through the smoke into the foggy maze of the city.
